Susan the dogs and I had a scare this morning when we encountered 2 rattlesnakes on a local trail system. Here’s a a photo and a brief video of one of the snakes:
Rattlesnake from David Hamilton on Vimeo.
Category: General
Dave's Place / Metamusing
Life and times of a webgeek
Tui says:
Wow, that’s nuts. Glad everyone is safe.
Kirsten says:
I think “totally letting his rattle off” is code for get the f— away from me before I bite your a–. Just sayin’.
dlh says:
hehe. He was far enough away that it was not a danger. When I was at Skidmore I worked a fair amount with a herpatologist whose specialty was rattlesnakes, I learned a lot about them. I was far away from this snake’s striking range when I recorded this.
Matt Snow says:
My wife would have been in the next town by the end of the video shoot.
Kevin says:
hey Dave,
I was more curious when I glanced at this photo again and saw someone commented (on Flickr) that is was a harmless Black Racer. I did a little digging and found this: http://www.timberrattlesnake.net/
Do a find for Black Racer, it’s about half way down the page. There’s a great photo that looks exactly like it. And, interestingly enough, it says, “If cornered it will put on a show and rear up with its mouth open preparing for a fight, it may even rush the threat hoping to bluff its way out of the situation. It will RATTLE its long thin tail hoping to appear like a Rattlesnake, this snake unlike its demeanor is HARMLESS.”
How cool is that?! A bluffing snake! They also ask for reports on any sightings since apparently this snake is rare.
anyway, don’t know if this is what it was, but thought you would find it interesting.
dlh says:
Hey,
Thanks for the heads up! Who knew – now Susan and I can return to that bluff, we had been avoiding it. I posted a comment to flickr and tried to report the black racer to that site – the guy’s webform is broken so I emailed the only email address I found in the form.